Bienvenue.

This blog is a very tiny window into my blogging life. A narrow, frosted window; the kind you usually see at the dentist's office to shield from view the impending torture slowly deviating toward your mouth.

Unfortunately, most of my blogging content is too personal to put up publicly, and I feel bad because 99.9% of the people I mention it to won't ever have access to it. So I made a public blog. It has resulted in the debacle that is this account - a superficial outpouring in humorously obscure, skewed ways.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Yesterday was the second day of the infamous Pirate Bay trial. This trial will set a certain precedence for the rights and circumstances circling around the infamous torrenting communities, and whether the RIAA, the ADV, the MPAA -you know, all those fun companies- have the right to sue the innards out of online torrent tracking sites, its associates, and certain contributers (run, aXXo, run!).

Honestly, I even don't really like pirates in theory. I enjoy certain stories surrounding them -hell, Pirates of the Caribbean was fantastic, no lie- but the pillaging, raping, and plundering was never really virtues I tended to raise as high in my life.

In the epic battle against Ninjas vs. Pirates, ninjas will kick their asses (I still remember the '100%' I got in high school on that essay...).

But I digress. I meant to continue with the fact that really, the only pirates I dig are the ones in the Pirate Bay. So I find it fantastic to hear that 50% of the charges being filed against the site's operators are being dropped:

There has been high drama on the second day of the Pirate Bay trial. Due to serious shortcomings in the prosecution evidence, around 50% of the charges in the case are going to have to be withdrawn. The defense describes it as a ’sensation’, seeing half of the charges being dropped on the second day.

The flaw in the evidence was pointed out by Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), who requested to comment on Roswall’s explanation of how BitTorrent actually works. Fredrik said that the prosecution misunderstood the technology, and told the court that the evidence doesn’t show that the Pirate Bay’s trackers are used.

This has resulted in prosecutor Håkan Roswall having to drop all charges relating to “assisting copyright infringement”, so the remaining charges are simply ‘assisting making available’. “Everything related to reproduction will be removed from the claim,” he said.

The defense was happy to see that already half of the charges were dropped during the morning session of the second day. “This is a sensation. It is very rare to win half the target in just one and a half days and it is clear that the prosecutor took strong note of what we said yesterday,” said defense lawyer Per E Samuelson.

What kills me laughing is the fact that the prosecution had over 2 years to prepare for this case in gathering evidence. You'd think they'd last longer than one day. This is a consensus statement said by many following this trial.

I mean, despite the enormity of their implication in file distribution, it really seems that TPB will end off laughing this whole thing off and pay a "smack on the wrist" fee of a few thousand dollars, instead of the heavily implied hundreds of millions it's unintentionally(?) taken away from corporations and their legal affiliations.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The overabundance of the Scarlett Speedster in all my internet related anythings lately make this post ridiculously themed. The Flash may be played by the illustrious villain of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog, a Mr. Neil Patrick Harris.

The thought both excites and scares me.

He's not really buff enough to play the Wally West (or if you prefer Jay Gerrick, Barry Allen or Bart Allen). His face, sure, I can imagine it. The attitude, I bet he could pull off really well too.

But as many a commenter has already said in regards to this, look at Jake Gyllenhaal. He has somehow managed to pull off [at least looking] like an amazing "The Prince," now dubbed "Dastan," from video game series, Prince of Persia. When I had first heard about Gyllenhaal's role last year, I was like, "Well, fuck. There goes another possibly awesome movie turned to shit."

But then I saw those photos. And hot damn.

There's a giant "ehhhh..." skepticism that clouds my judgment on how well the film overall could be pulled off.

The only saving grace seems to be Batman. The Dark Knight totally redeemed all the shitty/subpar/not-really-awesome comic book and/or video game movies that have come out in the past few years.

I can only imagine what the upcoming Street Fighter movie is going to turn out to be like...

Thursday, February 5, 2009

This guy can still swim laps around you, and is a million times more physically fit than most can even claim to be at such a young age.

Police are trying to charge him for smoking weed? The house wives of America are crying because their child's idol submitted to one of the biggest common day peer pressures? Come on.

In the words of Phil de Franco, if you believe your kid hasn't smoked pot, they're either lying, or the most perfect child in the world.

Would the press be freaking out if they saw Phelps smoking a cigar or chugging back a beer? No.

Marijuana is less addictive for the human body than alcohol and cigarettes. I'm not saying that it doesn't lower the sperm count and addle the brain cells (which it does), but weed is something that most people don't smoke every day of their lives. Only a small minority actually do smoke pot every day (in Canada, at least).

There is significantly more scientific evidence that shows alcohol and cigarettes having severely more detrimental side effects on the human body than pot ever has. For crying out loud, booze and cigarettes are leading risk factors for the top killing diseases and medical ailments running rampant in the North American population -- stroke, COPD, cardiovascular diseases (heart related problems), liver and lung cancers -- just to name a few.Howmanybillionsof dollars world wide to you think goes to treat the diseases that occur as a result of smoking?

Just to put in in perspective, heart disease and stroke costs the Canadian economy more than $18 billion every year in physician services, hospital costs, lost wages and decreased productivity (Heart and Stroke, 2009). In the states, it costs the economy greater than $40 billion per year (McCance and Huether, 2006).What do you think the medical causalities of pot smoking are in proportion to this?

This isn't a "legalization of pot" support post, but I just think everyone is blowing everything out of proportion.

He's young, smokin' hot, and has the most lovely tattoo near his... uhh, nevermind.

So, he smoked pot. He's like, 24. It's not like he was about to compete in an Olympic event the next day. The media just needs to chill the frick out.

Side note: Kellogg's dropped Phelps for endorsement due to this incident. Boycott.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

I've been listening non-stop to Eminem for the last few days, in quiet anticipation of his album that's apparently due to hit the shelves next month. If a person could ever be physically embodied--heart and soul--with just the use of words and music, it may as well be Eminem.

I love literature. I love words; the power written verse can have. English is the one subject that is effortless for me. I can get lost in a book, searching for subtle symbolism and analogies that perhaps the author didn't even intend for. For my university English class, I pulled entries from my blog, made minor revisions, and handed them in as essays. I got As on all of them.

I remember in high school, my English teacher mentioned how some poet named Seamus Heaney had praised Marshall Mathers III, naming him to be one of the best upcoming poets of the century.

I didn't really think much about it, until I read a magazine a couple months later. It had featured an article on Seamus Heany, a Nobel Prize winner in Literature.

Then I stole my brother's CDs and really started listening to this guy. I was blown away.

I won't pretend that I can relate to some of the personal shit Eminem has included in his discography. To do that would be insulting, both to him and the people that have been in the shoes his words portray. Some of the stuff he talks about is over my head, to a point. I don't understand the context, haven't looked into the double meanings. Or never will experience.

But that's okay.

What I can do, however, is appreciate. Bask in the shadow of the portraits that many of his songs paint. I have, right now, his complete discography from 1997-2004 -- the year his best friend, his hype man, was murdered (shot three times in the head and chest). So he withdrew into himself and turned into a recluse, and he supposedly irrevocably fell out of the media spotlight.

Clearly, the music press has changed its tune in the past few months, since his statement back in October '08 that he was releasing a new album called Relapse. It's been pushed back a few times, but I can honestly say that it is one of the top things in 2009 that I'm looking forward to.

This guy is a lyrical genius. Apparently, as a kid, he read the whole dictionary in search of words he could use for rhyme in rap battles. He read the f*cking dictionary. I don't know how much you know about Detroit, coupled with the environment he was raised in as a kid. Reading the dictionary wouldn't have been one of my past times if I was in a similar situation. But regardless, it probably was the foundation that gave him the vocabulary of a modern day Greek Muse.

So, yes. Eminem. Relapse.

Hopefully, by the end of it all, we can all be wholeheartedly singing, "Guess who's back?"

Hello, World.

“Love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don't, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said that it'd be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.”- Dr. Meredith Grey, Grey's Anatomy